Monday, February 19, 2007

The precautionary principle is usually associated with strident environmentalists who believe that those seeking to introduce a new technology or new chemical should be forced to show that it is safe before doing so. Corporate sponsors of those new technologies and chemicals almost always take the opposite view; until something is proven to be dangerous, it should be allowed. (There is, of course, never any discussion by these corporate sponsors of who should spend money to do the after-the-fact testing. The unspoken assumption is that the entire human population is to be engaged in an uncontrolled experiment to determine the dangers.)

Tillerson's plea is one that is heard daily in industry circles when any kind of regulation is discussed, especially any that are labelled "environmental." The argument amounts to an economic precautionary principle. We are told that we must not allow any regulation to proceed if it could harm economic activity. After all, what will happen to the poor, corporate leaders say, if we cannot lift them up with economic growth? (There is, of course, no discussion about lifting them up through the redistribution of wealth, say, via public services; naturally, that kind of discussion is considered a breach of etiquette among the world's CEOs.)

But, we should question such arguments not because they come from corporate CEOs though that may give us cause for suspicion. A keen observer might suspect that the problem with the arguments is that apples are indeed being compared to oranges. These arguments assume that two things--the economy and the environment--are contained in some greater whole and that prefering one over the other is a zero-sum game. Only a little more thinking should yield the true situation, namely, that the economy is merely part of a whole called the environment. You might call this the fallacy of confusing the whole for a part. But simple observation will reveal to anyone that the economy is contained within the environment. Disrupting or destabilizing the environment risks crashing the economy altogether since the economy relies utterly on the natural world for its very functioning.

While the captains of industry will find this fact discomfitting, it may be even more perplexing to another group--those proposing that the right technology can give us a bright green future, one in which there is no need to change human behavior except in the direction of using green technology.

It is precisely because we have failed to see the consequences of our technology that we are now ensnared in a perilous ecological predicament. To assume that more technology will solve our problems is to live out Benjamin Franklin's well-known definition of insanity. Environmental education giant, David Orr, is fond of saying that as our knowledge grows, so does our ignorance. His favorite example is our relatively recent knowledge of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which seemed so handy as refrigerants when they were discovered in the 1930s. Over time our ignorance of the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer expanded alongside increasing uses for the substances. The result was a hole in the ozone, a development which, had it not been addressed, would have imperilled all of human civilization and plant and animal life as well.

It should be obvious then that applying the precautionary principle to the economy misses the point. Environmental regulation may indeed retard economic activity. But that damage, if it occurs, is different in kind from the damage our technology and numbers inflict on the biosphere every day. One may lead to a transient loss of wealth; the other may lead to a colossal loss of human life and of the very civilization we have built.

This is not a story about tradeoffs. It is a (pre)cautionary tale about gruesome and unforgivable destruction which we may yet avoid. But a positive outcome depends on casting off the notion that our economy as it currently functions will provide "benefits" that are sustainable with only a few changes here and there. Nothing short of a complete reordering of our priorities will makes us friends with the biosphere again. That is the true meaning of the precautionary principle and the reason why so few have actually embraced it.

7 comments:

j.russow@shawlink.ca
said...

Another skewed version of the precautionary principle.

At a 1998 meeting of the Canadian Fraser industry-- a right wing think tank - on Climate Change, I cited the wording of the precautionary principle in the Framework Conention on Climate change. In response, a US scientist funded by the fossil fuel industry redefined the precautionary. "where there is a threat to the economy [rather than environmnet or climat change] full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the threat" (a paraphrase}

Revised comment: Another skewed version of the precautionary principle.

At a 1998 meeting of the Canadian Fraser institute-- a right wing think tank - on Climate Change, I cited the wording of the precautionary principle in the Framework Convention on Climate change. In response, a US scientist funded by the fossil fuel industry redefined the precautionary principle. "where there is a threat to the economy [rather than environment or climate change] full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the threat" (a paraphrase}

We said, Kurt. I aprticularly like your point about how our technological solutions often lead to new problems, even as they solve the old. This is my biggest worry about the geoengineering movement. Yes, we can cool down the planet with giant space mirrors or by releasing dust into the upper atmosphere... but what will be the other consequences of our actions? The precautionary principle implies that we should try to prevent the problem, rather than solve it after the fact.

Before you argue that resistence to the precautionary principal is about "money before morals", you should probably note that every economic decision is a question of life or death for somebody.

People die every day in the third world due to poverty. The way to end the death is to eliminate the poverty. Since socialism is just shorthand for 'poverty and death on a massive scale', it is eliminated from consideration by Franklin's definition of insanity. The remaining possibility is capitalism.

I would suggest applying the precautionary principal first to itself. If you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no possible harm from applying the precautionary principal, we'll apply it. Since proving a negative is impossible, the discussion should end there.

The precautionary principle is not about "money before morals." It is about the survival of the species. If we don't think carefully about our next steps, we could end up making catastrophic mistakes like those detailed in Jared Diamond's book "Collapse." One such catastrophic mistake is exponential economic growth in the face of limited fossil fuel resources. If we wait too long to make the transition to a renewable energy economy, we are in for terrible hardships.

I would contend that you are a prisoner of today's most insidious dualism, the idea that a society must be either socialist or capitalist. Many European countries and Canada have a mixed system which among other things provides health care to all. That this is good for business is not lost on many businesses including America's automobile manufacturers who have embraced Canada as an excellent place to build cars. The other problem with your observation is that the words "socialist" and "capitalist" have many varied meanings to many different people.

I also suspect that you are a cornucopian in your thinking, that is, you believe the world is an endless pot of resources that we can take at will and use without dangerous consequences such as climate change and resource depletion.

Unfortunately,we won't know whether you are right until it's likely too late to do anything to avert catastrophic results. What you are suggesting is that we continue our uncontrolled experiment in climate change and resource depletion and see how it goes.

If you are right, you've saved us a lot of money. If you are wrong, you put at risk the entire world civilization including the poor whom you rightly identify as having been largely shafted, but more in countries that have a purer capitalist system, and who consistently have fared better under the mixed systems of Europe and Canada. (To affix the label socialist on vile dictatorships where many have suffered, I think is disingenuous. It is mere name calling rather than analysis.)

Why not be practical and accept the best of both systems and add sustainability to the mix.